Word: finlander
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...deeply forested, lake-strewn country of Finland was celebrating a national festival. Every Finnish hamlet was gaily festooned and beflagged. Schoolchildren had the day off. Deputations from the provinces and from many foreign countries, converging on Helsingfors, the capital,, bore testimonials signed by many a foreign bigwig. At night the festivities culminated in a gigantic concert in the city's largest auditorium, with two symphony orchestras and a choir of 500 voices. There were 8,000 people in the audience. In places of honor sat President Svin-hufvud, Field Marshal Baron Mannerheim and the visiting Prime Ministers of Denmark...
...self assurance -receiving the congratulations of state officials, municipal leaders, foreign envoys and friends. At the concert all eyes were upon his rugged figure as he sat, with his small, dapper wife, between the President and the Field Marshal. Though urged, he declined to make a speech. Even when Finland's Premier, Dr. Kivimaki, addressing the great audience, presented him with a laurel wreath symbolic of an entire nation's debt, he remained firmly and shyly silent. It was only later, at a banquet given by intimate friends, that he tried to express his gratitude. As he stood...
That was two years ago. Next week Sibelius has another birthday. This time there will be no speeches, no receptions, no disquieting crowds of idolaters. That birthday belonged to Finland. This belongs to Sibelius. Full of years and honors, he will pass the day at his villa, "Ainola," in the forests some 30 mi. north of the capital, not expecting a visit from even one of his five married daughters. Yet for him his 72nd birthday will be more important than his work. A good part of his day will be spent "working in undisturbed peace." His Eighth Symphony...
Cold Water. Though his eminence is still somewhat grudgingly conceded in Central Europe, for Central Europeans have a firm faith that only a Central European can write a good symphony, little Finland's great man Sibelius is regarded by many a musician as the lineal successor of Beethoven and Brahms. His present fame has arrived slowly and late. His music, individual, serious, austere and sometimes forbidding, contains no trace of modernistic tricks or formulas. As he once remarked to his publisher (in Swedish) "Här i utlandet fabricemr ni cocktails i olika külorer, och nu kommer...
...father was a regimental physician, and Sibelius was born at Tavastehus, a small town in the interior of Finland. He was just an ordinary little boy when he began to study the piano at the age of nine, but he started to compose almost immediately. At 15 he took up the violin, with the local military bandmaster as instructor. In his mature years he confessed to an early ambition to become a great violinist. The respectable Sibelius family, however, considered a career as a musician too precarious. They suggested law, and for a time the young composer dutifully pegged away...